Culture and Society in the Stuart Restoration Literature, Drama, History [Paperback]

Literary and cultural changes reflecting new commercial and imperial interests of Restoration Britain.Questions of national identity and difference came to be framed in terms of international trade and imperial ambition during the Stuart Restoration. Thus religious and royal authority gave way before the advance of a secular literary culture geared to the demands of a developing commercial and imperial nation.Questions of national identity and difference came to be framed in terms of international trade and imperial ambition during the Stuart Restoration. Thus religious and royal authority gave way before the advance of a secular literary culture geared to the demands of a developing commercial and imperial nation.Culture and Society in the Stuart Restoration shows how the Restoration produced the concept of a national literature crucial to a new nationalist cultural enterprise: questions of national identity and difference, of what it meant to be English or British or both, came to be framed in terms of international trade and imperial ambition; and religious and royal authority gave way before the advance of a secular literary culture geared to the demands of a developing commercial and imperial nation.Introduction; 1. Literature, culture, and society in Restoration England Gerald MacLean; Part I. Drama and Politics: 2. The quest for consensus the lord mayor's shows in the 1670s John Patrick Montano; 3. Politics and the restoration masque the case of Dido and Aeneas Andrew Walkling; 4. Factionary politics John Crowne's Henry VI Nancy Klein Maguire; Part II. Authorship and Authority: 5. Pepys and the private parts of monarchy James Grantham Turner; 6. Milton, Samson Agonistes, and the Restoration Blair Worden; 7. Milton, Dryden, and the politics of literary controversy Steven N. Zwicker; 8. 'Is he like other men?' The meaning of the Principia Mathematica, and the author as idol Robert Iliffe; Part III. Women and Writing: 9. A woman's best setting out is silence: thlc§